defect; but to us the omission seems to affect the most vital point of all, since our conception of the soul involves its eternity, that is, that it lives always in the present, is not too fine to exist, secure that it is bound neither by past nor future, but capable of revolutionizing the character at all moments. Here is the ground of the remarkable difference that meets us already in the reliefs of the later classic times. In the reliefs of the best age the figures are always in profile and in action. Complete personification being out of the question, it is expressly avoided, — each figure waives attention to itself, merges itself in the plot. Later, when the profounder idea of a personality that does not isolate or degrade has begun to make itself felt, this constraint is given up, figures face the spectator, and enter as it were into relation with the actual world.

the

The Church very early expressed this feeling of the higher significance of the head, by allowing it to be sufficient if the head alone were buried in holy ground. In Art it is naïvely indicated by exaggerated size of the head and of the eyes, a very common trait of the earlier times, and not quite obsolete at the time of the Pisani. This clumsy expedient is relinquished, but the need it indicated continued, without the possibility of finding any complete satisfaction in Sculpture. Instead of the intensity and directness that Art now insists upon, Sculpture can give only extension and indirect hints; instead of mind present, only its effects and products, with the working cause expressly removed.

This is the ground of the seeming injustice to Sculpture at the time of the Revival. Its relative excellence was undervalued, because what it could do was not quite to the point. While the painters went on producing their antediluvian forms, the sculptors saw things much more as we do, yet the paintings seemed the most life-like. It is astonishing, when we remember that Nicola was older than Cimabue, Giovanni than

Giotto, Ghiberti than Frà Angelico, that the painters did not learn from the sculptors more of the actual appearance of things. It is still more astonishing that it is the painters that get all the praise for accuracy. Vasari is endless in his praises of Giotto, Spinello, Stefano, (called Scimia, or the Ape of Nature,) and a host of others, for accurate imitation. Giovanni Villani boasts that "it is our fellow-citizen Giotto who has portrayed most naturally every form and action." Ghiberti finishes an admiring account of some paintings of Ambrogio Lorenzotto's with the exclamation that it is truly marvellous to think that all this is only a picture. Few persons, probably, would see in the specimens of Ambrogio's work that still remain anything wonderful for resemblance to Nature, — whilst in Ghiberti's everybody acknowledges the astonishing truth of the detail. He tells us that he sought "to imitate Nature as far as was possible to him, ". but he seems not to be aware how much better he succeeded than the people he praises. Paolo Uccello, who was twenty years younger than Ghiberti, got his nickname from his skill in painting birds. But one would rather undertake to paint birds as well as Paolo than to carve them as well as Ghiberti.

We may learn here how little the demand to "imitate Nature" expresses what is intended. No accuracy, however demonstrable, will satisfy it. To interest me in a picture, it is not enough that something is as visible there as it is elsewhere; it must be something that I was already striving to see. It was not a greater circumstantiality of statement than was demanded, but greater directness, that it should be relieved of what was unessential to its purpose, tending only to obscure it. A painting, however rude, has at least this negative merit, that, by the express substitution of the appearance for the actual image, needless entanglement in the material is avoided. Weight and bulk are not indeed annihilated, but they are no longer of primary importance, and thus less obstruc

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It seems to us easier to paint than to carve, and we might expect to find Painting the older art. But the difficulty lies less in the execution than in the conception. Painting is not a tinting of surfaces, but the power to see a complex subject in unity. We may think we have no difficulty in seeing the landscape, but most persons, if called upon to state what they saw, pictorially, would show that they could not see the wood for the trees. Beginners suppose it is some knack of the hand that they are to acquire, when they learn to draw; but that is a small part of the matter; the great difficulty is in the seeing. Ordinary vision is piecemeal we see the parts, but not the picture, or only vaguely. Even the degree of facility that is implied in any enjoyment of scenery is not so much a matter of course as it seems. Cæsar occupied himself, while crossing the Alps, with composing a grammatical treatise. There is no evidence that there was anything odd in this. Perhaps Petrarch was the first man that ever climbed a hill to enjoy the view. We are not aware how much of what we see in Nature is due to pictures. Hardly any man is so unsophisticated, but that, if he should try to sketch a landscape, he would betray, in what he did or in what he omitted, that he saw it more or less at second-hand, through the interpretations of Art. A portfolio of Calame's or Harding's or Turner's drawings will give us new eyes for the most familiar

scenes.

But we are aided still more by our habit of looking at things theoretically, apart from their immediate practical bearing. A savage can comprehend a carved

image, but not so readily a picture. An Indian whom Catlin painted with half his face in shadow became the laughingstock of the tribe, as "the man with half a face." It is not necessary to suspect Mr. Catlin's chiaroscuro; what puzzled them was, doubtless, the bringing together in one view what they had seen only separate. They were accustomed to see the man in light and in shadow; but what they cared for, and therefore what they saw, was only the effect in making it more or less easy to recognize him and to ascertain his state of mind, intentions, etc. His face was either visible or obscured; if they could see enough for their purpose, they regarded only that. For it to be both at once was possible only from a point of view which they had not reached. A child takes the shading of the portrait for dirt, that being the form in which darkening of the face is familiar to him. A carved image is easier comprehended, because it can be han-. dled, turned about, and looked at on different sides, and a material connection thereby assured between the various aspects. To transfer this connection to the mind- to see varying distances in one vertical plane, so that mere gradations of light and shade shall suggest all these aspects arranged and harmonized in one view is a farther step, and the difficulty increases with the variety embraced. Cicero was struck with this superiority in the artists of his time. "How much," he says, "do painters see in shadow and relief that we do not see!" Yet their perception seems strangely limited to us. The ancients had little notion of perspective. Their eyes were too sure and too well-practised to overlook the effect of position in foreshortening objects, and they were much experienced in the corrections required, and the effect of converging lines in increasing apparent distance was taken advantage of in their theatre-scenes. But they had not learned that the difference between the actual and the apparent form is thorough-going, so that the picture no longer stands in the attitude of passive indifference to

wards the beholder, but imposes upon him its own point of view. It was thought remarkable in the Minerva of Fabullus, that it had the appearance of always looking at the spectator, from whatever point it was viewed. This would be miraculous in a statue, and must seem so in the picture so long as it is looked upon only as one side of a statue. The wall-paintings of Pompeii, doubtless copies or reminiscences of Greek originals,-with masterly skill in the parts, and with some success in the landscape as far as it was easily reducible to one plane, —are only collections of fragments, and show utter incapacity to see the whole at once as a pic ture. For instance, in one of the many pictures of Narcissus beholding himself in the well, the head, which is inclined sideways, instead of being simply inverted in the reflection, is reversed,—so that the chin, which is on the spectator's left in the figure, is on the right in the reflected image as if the artist, knowing no other way, had placed himself head downwards, and in that position had repeated the face as already painted. Such a blunder could not originate with a copyist, for it would have been much easier to copy correctly. It is clear from the general excellence of the figure that it is not the work of an inferior artist. Nor can it have come from mere carelessness; it is too elaborate for that,—and, moreover, here is the main point of the picture, that which tells the story. Doubtless the painter had noticed the pleasingness of

such reflections, as repeating the human form, the supreme object of interest; but the interest stopped there. He saw the face above and the face below, as he would see the different sides of a statue; but so incapable was he of perceiving the connection and interdependence of them, that, even when Nature had made the picture for him, he could not see it. This is no isolated, casual mistake, but only a good chance to see what is really universal, though not often so obvi

ous.

In this and other pictures the water is like a bit of looking-glass stuck up in front, without perspective, without connection with the ground, the mere assertion of a reflection. The conception embraced only the main figure; the rest was added like a label, for explanation only. These men did not see the landscape as we see it, because the interest was wanting that combines it into a picture for our eyes. Our "love of Nature" would have been incomprehensible and disgusting to a Greek; he would have called our artists "dirt-painters." And from his point of view he would be right. Dirt it is, if we abide by the mere facts. The interest of Art lies not in the facts, but in the truth, that is, in the facts organized, shown in their place. It is not that we care more about stocks and stones than they did, but that we hold the key to an arrangement that gives these things a significance they have not of themselves.

I AM a frank, open-hearted man, as, perhaps, you have by this time perceived, and you will not, therefore, be surprised to know that I read my last article on the carpet to my wife and the girls before I sent it to the "Atlantic,” and we had a hearty laugh over it together. My wife and the girls, in fact, felt that they could afford to laugh, for they had carried their point, their reproach among women was taken away, they had become like other folks. Like other folks they had a parlor, an undeniable best parlor, shut up and darkened, with all proper carpets, curtains, lounges, and marble-topped tables, too good for human nature's daily food; and being sustained by this consciousness, they cheerfully went on receiving their friends in the study, and having good times in the old free-and- easy way; for did not everybody know that this room was not their best? and if the furniture was oldfashioned and a little the worse for antiquity, was it not certain that they had better, which they could use, if they would?

"And supposing we wanted to give a party," said Jane, "how nicely our parlor would light up! Not that we ever do give parties, but if we should, for a wedding-reception, you know."

and

I felt the force of the necessity; it was evident that the four or five hundred extra which we had expended was no more than such solemn possibilities required.

"Now, papa thinks we have been foolish," said Marianne, "and he has his own way of making a good story of it; but, after all, I desire to know if people are never to get a new carpet. Must we keep the old one till it actually wears to tatters? This is a specimen of the reductio ad absurdum which our fair antagonists of the other sex are fond of employing. They strip what we say of all delicate

II.

shadings and illusory phrases, and reduce it to some bare question of fact, with which they make a home-thrust at us.

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Yes, that 's it; are people never to get a new carpet?" echoed Jane.

"My dears," I replied, "it is a fact that to introduce anything new into an apartment hallowed by many home-associations, where all things have grown old together, requires as much care and adroitness as for an architect to restore an arch or niche in a fine old ruin. The fault of our carpet was that it was in another style from everything in our room, and made everything in it look dilapidated. Its colors, material, and air belonged to another manner of life, and were a constant plea for alterations; and you see it actually drove out and expelled the whole furniture of the room, and I am not sure yet that it may not entail on us the necessity of refurnishing the whole house."

"My dear!" said my wife, in a tone of remonstrance; but Jane and Marianne laughed and colored.

"Confess, now," said I, looking at them, "have you not had secret designs on the hall- and stair-carpet?"

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Now, papa, how could you know it? I only said to Marianne that to have Brussels in the parlor and that old mean-looking ingrain carpet in the hall did not scem exactly the thing; and, in fact, you know, mamma, Messrs. Ketchem & Co. showed us such a lovely pattern, designed to harmonize with our parlor-carpet."

"I know it, girls," said my wife; "but you know I said at once that such an expense was not to be thought of."

Now, girls," said I, " let me tell you a story I heard once of a very sensible old New-England minister, who lived, as our country-ministers generally do, rather near to the bone, but still quite contentedly. It was in the days when knee